Against The Grain: Vaccination

Before my first son was born, I had given vaccination no thought. That is—like many people—my default position was pro-vaccination and I fully intended to follow the government schedule. However, 3 years later, neither of my sons have received any vaccinations to date. Even as this outcome was unfolding, I didn’t predict it.

Retrospectively, the first seed of questioning was planted when one of my midwives—who I respected a great deal—made a blanket suggestion during antenatal classes. She said: ‘I’m not recommending you don’t vaccinate at all. But I do recommend you do your research on Hep B. Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary to inject a baby with Hep B. That’s my opinion. You look into it yourself before you decide.’

I did some rudimentary research after that, and agreed that the newborn Hep B jab didn’t seem critical or even important for us given that I wasn’t a carrier myself and my newborn baby faced almost zero risk of otherwise contracting Hep B. Birth is enough of a trauma to recover from, and there was no compelling reason to introduce another trauma (which at the time, I considered a needle to be for a newborn).

Deciding to delay the newborn Hep B vaccine was important because it was the first time I had explored a vaccine on its individual merit. It was the first time I had bothered to critique any element of the recommended schedule. Still, it didn’t immediately inspire any other critical analysis of other vaccines, or really even the Hep B jab for children. I declined Hep B on my newborn, but I fully intended to catch up on this vaccination at the 2 month well-being visit.

Too precious

At the time of the 2 month well-being visit, R was unwell. ‘Unwell’ is accurate, but emotively was an understatement for me. The morning of the visit, when I went to wake him for the appointment I discovered him in a deep sleep looking a bit blue. Not in the unhappy sense. In a physical, looking very unhealthy, coloured sense. It scared the bejesus out of me. We went to the maternal and child health appointment where, without hesitation, I said ‘no way’ to vaxing him that day. I was impulsively repulsed by the idea of jabbing him when he was so obviously not well. 

Immediately after the well-being visit, we went to the doctor and learned that he had an upper respiratory tract infection. It was ‘just’ a cold. But he was so little and so vulnerable. That was perhaps the worst parenting day of my life (apart from his birth, but at least that was also one of the best). I was terrified to put him down to sleep. I held him for most of the day, and eventually when I did put him into his cot I just cried and cried I was so worried about him not waking up.

After that day, I waited for him to get well enough for me to catch up his vaccinations. A week went by. Two weeks. A month. No matter how healthy he was, he just seemed too little and vulnerable for me to be ‘polluting’ his body with vaccinations. That’s how I saw it. I knew how precious his health was, and I didn’t want to introduce anything that would compromise it. I felt a strong intuitive aversion to vaccinating a baby who was so perfect and yet so vulnerable. I wanted to feel that his little body was robust enough before the collective ‘we’ started assaulting his immune system artificially.  

Retrospectively, I think this reflected the prevailing of my brand of motherly instinct. I still wasn’t rejecting vaccinations. I was delaying them, until a time when I was emotionally comfortable with the concept of exposing his system to immunity artifice. But I was equally worried about exposing his system to nature’s wrath. What if he caught a vaccine-associated disease while I was vacillating? Because my decision making was so emotional, I was in a limbo of discomfort about the risks posed either way.

The getting of wisdom
 
Having walked this path for 3 years now, I know well the widely promoted misconceptions about non-vaxers: that they are a collective of hippy or chardonnay-sets, autism-fearing and Wakefield-loving, conspiracy theorists and sceptics, mutually whipping each other up into a frenzy about the purported dangers of vaccines.

The truth for me is that deciding not to follow the recommended schedule was a very personal decision that was potentially isolating in its unpopularity. At the beginning of this journey, I knew one person who had refused vaccination. You know those time-lapse clips where someone is standing still while the crowd rushes around them? That’s what going against the tide on vaccination felt like to me.

If you have questions about the risks and benefits of vaccination versus other approaches, where do you get answers? From my experience, vaccination is even less welcome as a general topic than politics. When I raised it, laypeople usually said either ‘I trust it’s all good. I don’t have any issue with it’ or ‘I have wondered about it, but I’ve never taken the time to look into it myself.’ Laypeople, largely, just weren’t interested. It wasn’t a dilemma for them, like it was for me. Even if they were curious, they were usually paddling in the same well of ignorance. Because, let’s face it, the main sources of public ‘information’ on vaccination are marketing grabs, vaccine promotional materials, fear mongering news articles, and GPs.

My brother is a GP. Initially, I tried to nut out what I was thinking and doing/not doing with him. In theory, he was an ideal bouncing board. I regarded his thinking and hoped to deepen my understanding with his knowledge and experience. In practice, talking about it together created a strain on our friendship. He said that he felt like I was looking for ‘the answer’ from him. Sometimes he felt that I was trying to influence him to change his practice or approach somehow. That I needed or wanted him to agree with me. I can’t deny that I have wanted him to acknowledge the grey areas. For about a year now, we haven’t talked about it. It’s not just off the agenda. It’s permanently on the agenda not to talk about it. The last time we spoke about it, he said ‘I can’t be an expert on vaccination. That’s not my job. My job is to know and follow the clinical guidelines and that’s what I do.’ I love my brother, but he ain’t no help to me on this one.

Fortunately for me, I have connected with other questioning people online. Mothers who are non-vaxers, selective vaxers, delayed vaxers, or to-the-schedule vaxers with questions. Almost everyone’s first post on joining these forums is ‘phew! I’m so glad I found this group.’ The common second sentence is: ‘Where do I find good information?’ People want support to understand the risk-benefit ratio of deciding whether or not, and what and when to vaccinate.

Humbled 

It has been my experience that most of the seasoned posters on these forums are quite widely informed about the vaccines and their associated diseases. Certainly, my knowledge has advanced. Pre-R, as I alluded before, I knew nothing. I’m not claiming expertise now. If anything—in any topic in my experience—the getting of wisdom is humbling. The more you know, the more you realise how much you don’t know.

The upside of reading reference books, medical journal articles, annual government reports on disease notifications and so forth is that I am no longer panicked about the issue. Knowledge has calmed me, because I better understand the risks of the diseases and the effectiveness of the vaccines. It’s no longer a question of ignorantly fearing that not vaccinating earmarks my children for the worst outcomes of every vaccine-associated disease. It is now an organic process of weighing up the pros and cons of not/vaccinating, and adjusting to new information and environment changes that alter our risk-benefit profile. For example, I gave serious consideration to vaccinating R for pertussis before F was born. The ultimate decider there was the ineffectiveness of the pertussis vaccine—if it was better, I’d have probably run with it.